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Don’t reduce protection for endangered waters

Posted by Mike Confino, September 3, 2014

Florida’s leaders would be poorly cast in a Hollywood blockbuster called “Guardians of the Waterways.”

Many of the state’s rivers and springs have been in a steady decline for years from pollution and excessive groundwater pumping. Yet lawmakers failed again this year to pass legislation to protect and conserve water, even though there was a bipartisan plan to do both.

Now one of Florida’s members of Congress, with the support of the state’s agriculture commissioner, is pushing a bill that would curtail federal authority to protect state waterways — presumably because Florida has been doing such a swell job.

“Florida can better regulate its waters than bureaucrats in D.C.,” said Panama City Republican Steve Southerland, sponsor of the grandiosely titled Waters of the United States Regulatory Overreach Protection Act.